This isn’t exactly where this belongs so feel free to delete this. I’m mildly infuriated there is no usable alternative to Amazon.com. I’m more than willing to buy products elsewhere, but it’s so easy to default to Amazon. Please help.
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We need a new Amazon rain forest.
I’m generally fine with Amazon. The main things I’d like to see changed:
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Their determined nagging to subscribe to Amazon Prime. I don’t have a good fix there.
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Perishable food. Walmart.com does a better job here IME, uses their existing infrastructure and delivery network to provide perishables in a tight time window.
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Limited product classification for searches. For electronics, Newegg does a better job of having a database with many aspects of products being searchable. In general, specialty rather than general-purpose stores seem to do a better job on this.
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Limited selection. Amazon is pretty darn good on this, but for some really esoteric stuff, Google Shopping can win, since it’ll index the inventory of many retailers. If I can’t find something on Amazon, that’s my next stop. It can also search for numeric ranges (“3…25”) as I recall, which can be useful for some items.
If you want an alternative for some reason, OP, you probably want to list what it is that you’d like done differently, as that kinda determines what alternatives make sense.
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If you cannot afford to shop elsewhere, then I don’t see how it’s reasonable to fault you for that. But if you can justify spending a little less and want to avoid it, then I’m sure you know what I would suggest. Do or do not, a wise man once said.
Are you frustrated that you can’t muster the willpower to avoid shopping there? The website was literally designed to get you addicted to it. The man himself has said as such. There are browser extensions that will block specific url families. I wouldn’t be surprised if entire extensions were designed for that website specifically.
I just wish there was an aggregator that isn’t Walmart or Amazon or Temu. I try really hard to spread my shopping around and actually buy local when I can. It just sucks Amazon is so easy.
Honestly I’ve been enjoying going to stores in person again. It definitely takes some getting used to after the convenience of online shopping has been a part of my life pretty much since I was in highschool, but I think the change is worth it. I’ll just make a list of things that I need and when the list gets big enough I just make a day of it and just go to a bunch of different stores.
I kinda forgot how satisfying it can be to actually go shopping. I got a couple new pillows and some new bed sheet sets last month and it was so nice being able to feel what I was buying before I actually got it. If I’d gotten the pillows from Amazon I guarantee I’d get something cheap and not find out until they show up that they are awful. And I probably wouldn’t return them and just justify it and convince myself they were better than my old pillows because they are “new.”
My issue with this is that, especially as a foreigner living abroad, I cannot always answer which shop might have the items I’m looking for.
I wish Google Maps allowed searching for shops by their inventory, like it does searching for restaurants by their menu. Even better, an open web protocol like RSS where shop websites can communicate to all crawlers what items are being sold where and which are out of stock, so that it’s not a Google Maps monopoly but an ecosystem…
If I’m being honest, the only thing stopping me from shopping at other sites is having to put my personal and payment details in yet another site for it to go stale, or fall out of my memory, or get leaked in the next big hack.
Some sites have “pay with Amazon” (more likely PayPal, but… ugh. I don’t remember why, but I hate it), but I’d love to see some universal adoption of some sort of payment and shipping details lockbox. Like SSO where you can revoke access to subscribers or something.
An SSO-like payment system with tracking and revocation is a great idea and would be amazing for us consumers. I’m just not holding my breath waiting for the corpos to implement it.
While nowhere near perfect (far from it, really), as long as the sites you are shopping on are PCI-compliant (most should be), you don’t have to worry too much about a compromised site leaking your payment details for use elsewhere.
Basically just use a password manager and don’t worry about saving credit card (NOT debit card) details in the site as long as they aren’t extra-sketchy.
That already exists with PayPal and Apple Pay for example. The remote site never sees your credit card, just an approval token. You won’t be able to get away from address though as they need to know how to get it to you.
There are people who sell products who are not affiliated with Amazon
Shocking I know
Those are getting harder and harder to find. I’ve had a number of occasions now where I went directly to a brand’s website or even their physical store in an attempt to avoid Amazon, only to receive the product in an Amazon box delivered by an Amazon courier anyway.
The most recent physical store was shoes: I found a size/style that fit well, but wanted a different color. I ordered the preferred color through the in store salesperson, but it was still fulfilled by Amazon.
Yeah. Lots of places may just use the Amazon warehouse side of the business. Especially if they offer products on Amazon.
I take full responsibility for myself. I try to shop independently when possible.
I’ve never used Amazon, so I really don’t need a new one. Or the old one.
I’ve bought the occasional book from it. It doesn’t seem that useful or good value for other things (I’ve only lived in Europe and Australia)
My problem is the algorithm. There is no way to browse categories and drill down into the features to find what you are actually looking to find.
You search for xxx company Product, and you may get that product on the first page, but it will be surrounded by dozens of cheap alternatives. I find a lot of those alternatives aren’t comparable to the one I actually seek.
If you don’t know the specific product you are looking for, you will never be able to sort the wheat from the chaff.
I personally use temu and I’ve had the same experience as amazon but for a far better price, my 60 dollar temu headphones had an almost studio quality microphone and metal frame
Also learn to solder and fix your own stuff to buy less, shave with a straight razor and razorblades and you’ll save hundreds over the year in razors
I’m honestly not sure why you’re being down voted. At this point temu is basically Amazon with longer shipping times.
It sort of is the next logical progression.
Because Temu is even worse for the environment and somehow has even worse labor practices than Amazon
You got a source for that claim? Specifically being worse than Amazon
I mean, Chinese companies are well documented as being incredibly shitty. I don’t have a specific source to reference but any amount of casual research backs up my claim.
But the cheap no name brand stuff from Amazon still come from the same factory in China. Only difference is you’ll get it in 2 days, pay more even though Amazon workers are underpaid and overworked and just make Bezos richer.
All the cheap no name brands are just the same Chinese products. One good example I have is, last year I got a knockoff Apple Watch band from Amazon as a gift for Christmas which was $10. Since it was the wrong size I bought one myself from AliExpress. When it arrived it had the same packaging and product number on it. Only difference is that it was $1 and took 2 weeks.
If you don’t buy cheap no name brand stuff from Amazon then this doesn’t apply to you but from my experience people buy the cheapest product and hence temu became popular.
They shipped malware in there mobile app
Hard pass for me
Amazon is convenient and two day shipping rules
Barely anything I order comes in 2 days anymore. It’s almost always 3 to 5 days.
I have a Amazon warehouse near me so that probably helps
Same here. Alot of things are even available for same day shipping.
Of course it is, but why does convenience have to be built on exploitation? I would gladly pay higher prices for an ethical alternative.
Then by all means, do so. I’ll keep doing as I do.
Not sure how you interpreted my comment as criticism, but it wasnt. Nevertheless, there is no comparable alternative, so unfortunateIy cant “do so”.
The difference is I don’t feel bad nor care about where I shop. I go where the deals are
Um, sure.
No.
Amazon is what it is because it creates an easier path for America to buy cheap, as Walmart and McDonald’s has done before to great microscopic economic success, due to the failures of our economic paradigm that shrinks wages and pushes manufacturing offshore for corporate profit.
We need higher wages, which create higher prices, which corrects for the misdeeds of our economic exploitation of foreign economies.
We have offloaded our economic burden onto other poorer nations, and that needs to stop. Pay a living wage and accept the higher cost at lower profits. Doing otherwise is an economic ouroboros that only swallows the easy part at the sake of the whole in the name of kicking an inflationary can down the road so that yachts can grow larger as the foundation of this country in undermined for icarian profits.
Fuck your CEO, pay us so they can pay us something and they can have less than everything, so they can keep from having nothing less than more than we can achieve through reluctant violence.
I wish it’d had stayed in the USA, Amazon has upset economies in other countries too.
They’re also shit to work for.
The one I worked at I heard a spoiled rich manager laughing about how “Amazon wont pay a living wage due to its great relationship with the local community”.
Edit; i worded the first sentence badly. I dont want Amazon inflicted upon anyone.
“Amazon wont pay a living wage due to its great relationship with the local community”.
So, taken by a normal person, not aquainted with corpo speak… that is some astounding anti-logic.
But if you know a bit of corpo, what that actually means is something like:
We have the local city government by the balls, greatly overexagerated the economic benefit our warehouse would bring to the city, got them to subsidize our construction costs, relax zoning laws or fees, change tax laws or give us a special carve out so that we pay less than if anyone else tried to build a warehouse here…
… and now if the city gov goes for policies/laws we don’t like, we’ll just shut down this location, I’ll go work the same job somewhere else, everyone else is unemployed, and then we’ll tell the media that’s because of the city government, and they’ll likely lose their elected positions.
Thank you for explaining, i knew enough to know that this was some clever wording to avoid paying people properly, but not enough to know the depth or implications. This should really be put about more, cause as it stands people say “isnt it great that Amazon invest in the local road network” or provide computers for schools, or whatever the latest one is…soon theyll be saying “isnt it great that Amazon provide housing”.
The even shorter, more direct version is:
‘Local community’ actually means ‘Official representatives of the local community.’
EDIT: And ‘great relationship’ means ‘we do business with whatever entity regularly, and that business we do is more advantageous to us than it is to them’.
… Also… I’m in America so… maybe this is somehow different in various Euro countries, but I seriously doubt it…
There’s no way Amazon invests in local roads.
I’m from Seattle.
Our roads are absolute ass, I’m talking worse than the average road in a small town in South Dakota or Montana.
They certainly don’t directly fund any roadwork around Seattle, despite having many logistics hubs in and near the city.
They’re more likely to strong arm a city, even literally sue them, into upgrading their roads than they are to… like directly contribute some share of their revenue or profit directly into the city’s road maintenance or construction budget.
0 chance Amazon directly funds building of any roads beyond the roads on their property.
Provide computers to schools? Sure, I believe that.
But I am highly doubtful that Amazon directly contributes to building local roads.
Only way I can even see that kind of making sense in a roundabout way is if the city has some kind of specific tax on heavier vehicles or vehicles used in delivery/logistics…
In which case … this would apply to any delivery/logistics vehicle of any kind that either transits through or is based out of the city.
By that logic anyone that pays a sales tax or property tax in the city pays for new roads, likely significantly more, as a group.
I don’t have source, they’ve claimed to invest in roads and provide computers, but I strongly suspect you’re right, just can’t confirm it cause I can’t provide an example…so let’s just say you’re right.
Also Amazon EU I think is based in Ireland which is kind of a tax haven. We can’t even cooperate within the EU to prevent tax havens…
Climb down off of your soapbox. Amazon is what it is because of early strategic decision making and long term shittiness. I’m talking about aggregation and exposure to semi-local partners.
Isn’t this what Etsy has tried to do? Miserably failed at it recently I think.
Wtf.
What kind of stuff have you been buying that you couldn’t find elsewhere (at a competitive price)?
I buy a moderate amount of my stuff online and was able to almost entirely avoid Amazon this year. The only exception was a phone display where Amazon had a LCD-variant for ~30€ while all others only had an OLED for ~90€.
I dont think its about availability, more about the convenience of having everything in one place and especially the rating system (which of course only works if you have a huge customer base and is also being exploited so not really a plus for Amazon anymore)
Ebay and Aliexpress seem to work just fine. I’ve only once ever ordered something from Amazon.
I’m trying to use Ebay more often but the source is hard to verify.
Amazon sources are equally hard to verify. The only difference is Amazon has a little more customer satisfaction power (by returns to a main warehouse) than ebay (now warehouses but still favors the customer). There’s continuously new ways to get counterfeit product sold on Amazon.
On the subject of returns (Amazon and others) Climate Town just did a video on it, and holy shit. Even knowing the problem the scale is hard to take in.
When I want a cheap plastic thingy, or cheap hardware and electronics to play around with, I get it off aliexpress. It’s virtually the same stuff as amazon just for the patient. Most of that stuff is made in China already even if I get it from an online or local brick and mortar retailer, so it seems more direct to me, avoiding needless retransportation, warehousing and waste.
When I want a quality thing I buy it from a local shop, especially when I need to see it or compare before buying. I can often find a Canadian online retailer too with just a bit of sleuthing.
This right here! If you are looking at something on amazon go to Ali or Temu.
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I agree, but sometimes you just need some cheap shit. I’d rather pay 2$ for stickers for my kids than the same ones for 9$ on amazon.
I think the point behind made is that the stuff on Amazon is literally the same items. People buy off Alibaba / express and resell on Amazon… With a pretty good markup.
I see way more dropshipping on Amazon than before. It’s gonna end up just being a front for the chineese stores.
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Also, check your local library for “creator” services. Our local libraries have 3d printers you can either use, or have them print stuff for you for dirt cheap. Really, really cool service.
I can often find a Canadian online retailer too with just a bit of sleuthing I’ve tried this a few times and most of them end up just being drop shippers with their own website dedicated to a type of product (and are questionably Canadian), sometimes shipping from whatever country warehouse to me. Any ideas how to tell vs an actual located in Canada shop?
But there is… Walmart.com in the US offers basically the same and often with 2 day shipping and in most cases same easy return.
I think he was hoping for something better than Amazon, as opposed to worse.
Every big name store has something similar the issue is that its worse or the same as Amazon, never better.
Probably not aligned with the OP but id like a place that aggregates quality things from all over no cheap sketchy plastic things but also not just common big items that are already in every big box store.
One thing I’ve realized about Amazon, at least lately, is that they don’t always have the lowest prices. For many items, I can go directly to the manufacturer’s site and get the same product for a lower or equal price with free shipping. If I have to wait a couple extra days, so be it. At least I’m not lining Bezos’ pockets.
